Nippon’s lost unity

Nuclear Capitalism seeks a revival despite Tenno’s warning

It is still kind of a taboo that is not to be discussed in public and definitely not by officials but there are visible signs for the moving of Japan’s capital from Tokyo to Osaka. Clearest signal is the visible new construction of office capacity in the south-west Japanese metropolis despite the deep recession that Japan is undergoing since 1989 that had to a large degree resulted from the collapse of the real estate market at the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties.

News programs usually show the destruction at the buildings housing the reactors in which at least one block is burning itself inevitably and unstoppable into the ground while two others cause huge problems having begun an at least partial nuclear meltdown as well.

Until today it is unclear whether the pressure tanks of the other reactor blocs are intact.

1331 burning elements in the half-destroyed cooling facility of bloc 4 are subject to releasing further heavy radiation in case of another earthquake.

If that happens the evacuation of Tokyo, that is 248 kilometres away from Fukushima would have to be considered but how to evacuate an area with 30 million people? No country will be able to manage such, one has to fear.

The German scientist and radiation expert Dr Christoph Zink designed a map that shows the contamination levels in Japan and compares those with the analysis from Chernobyl, today 26 years after the disaster.

The contamination map is based on the “supervision zones” from Chernobyl including the permanently evacuated zone. In areas illustrated by light red colour relating to Chernobyl also today are families with children living. The kids are observed and are provided in school with non-contaminated food as well as apple pectin that is also recommended by the EU’s research institute Ispra.

Nevertheless, Dr Zink reports, the general practitioners of the region of Gomel and Slavutych are worried about at least 80 up to 90% of the children who they say show symptoms such as fatigue, retarded development, allergies, infections, hormone disorder, apathy as well as blood circulation and cardiologic problems.

Relating this knowledge from Chernobyl to the Japanese situation one has to conclude that all red and light red zones have to be regarded as absolutely unsuitable for children.
This exceeds by far the preliminarily evacuated zone as shown by the map and especially affects the valley of the Abukuma river that is streaming from the south towards Koriyama and Fukushima up to Sendai. According to Wikipedia there are 1.2 million people living in this area and by this more than 100,000 children as well that under radiological aspects should not remain there, Dr Zink explains.

The map combined the activity of Caesium(Cs)-134 and Cs-137. the two isotopes are initially released in a mutual way but then the radiation of Cs-134 much more rapidly declines than the one of Cs-137.

On the maps from Chernobyl only Cs-137 is being shown making Dr Zink halve the assumed activity of the isotope in comparison with Chernobyl on the map for Japan as this would be the closest possible way to scrutinise the contamination in the different zones.

The so called un-named zone in which for instance cities such as Gomel or Slavutych are located relate to the darkest grey shade and partly the second darkest grey that indicates a level of contamination of above 70,000 Bq/m² Cs-134+137.

Dr Zink finds it remarkable, he says, that until today there is no map that shows the contamination outside of the region of Tohoku, such as for instance the prefecture Niigata that belongs to the Chubu region. Those areas are shown by stripes.

The map also shows how useless the circle-like evacuation in fact is.

Although even Tokyo might become subject to increased contamination levels an evacuation would be impossible and therefore social apartheid will dictate who can afford to evacuate himself and who not.

Interestingly enough, the Japanese emperor, the Tenno, reportedly had warned the citizens not to move back into the areas that the government slowly and steadily declares “safe” in an effort to make people re-populate the areas without mandatory evacuation. However, the Tenno’s speech had been edited and this passage has not been broadcasted on 11 March, the day of the Tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. The Japanese authorities obviously fear that the consequences would be nothing less than the permanent separation of Japan.

watch the film by Dorothée Menzner and Ralph T. Niemeyer on the catastrophe of Fukushima here: